Page 30 of Maneater (The Mavens #1)

Could I be sitting across from my leak? I try to run through our conversations to remember if she mentioned visiting other locations, but I can’t quite recall, although I make a note to look into it once I’m back at my desk. “I’m sure you do,” I say with a laugh, trying to play it off.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

She doesn’t ask it as if she’s offended, just a simple question.

“Every time I bump into you, you’re talking with someone, trying to get them to spill some kind of secret.” That seems like a safe answer, and when she doesn’t look alarmed, I think I’m right. Instead, she shrugs, then puts her elbows on the table, looking at me with a sly smile.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she says with a shrug and a devious little smile. A beat of silence passes before she speaks once more. “Are you going to the party tomorrow night?”

I shake my head. “That’s for guests.”

“Oh, I’m sure the VP of Operations could come.

I know I’d love to see you there.” She shifts closer to me, her arm brushing along mine.

She lifts her arms, unpinning her hair and letting it fall over her shoulders.

My eyes can’t help but follow the move, the way it lands across her tanned skin, and follow to where some of the strands fall between her breasts.

She takes a deep breath in, making them rise and fall, and once again, my eyes follow.

It’s intentional.

Somewhere in my common sense, I know it’s intentional, some act she’s putting on to distract me, but I can’t find it in me to care.

“I brought a really pretty dress,” she says, her voice a flirty whisper.

I’m under her spell, and she knows it.

“Did you, now?” I ask, and my eyes shift from her hair and her breasts to her lips. Her pink tongue darts out, wetting the bottom one before biting it and nodding. All I can think about is the way that tongue felt on my thumb the other day and how it could feel in other places.

I reach over on instinct, hand moving toward the lock of hair between her breasts, pausing right before I do, realizing the line I’m most definitely crossing.

Our eyes lock, and the teasing look is gone from Josie’s eyes, replaced by full, parted lips and wide eyes and undeniable need that is echoed in my own body.

“You can touch me, Rowan,” she whispers, and the words go right to my dick.

I shouldn’t.

There is enough complicating everything in my mind, enough shit on my plate right now. I don’t need to add a beautiful woman—a guest—who seems hellbent on getting under my skin to that pile.

But I want my fingers on her skin.

I want to feel her warmth, her softness, to hear her breath hitch. It’s becoming an all-consuming desire, a distraction, and I know she’s the only one who will ease it.

My hand moves once more before I touch the strands of her hair, and her breathing stops, suffocated by the promise we can both feel in the air between us. When my fingers graze her skin as I push the hair behind her shoulders, my cock stirs. From my fucking fingers grazing her skin .

When my hand moves back to her neck, grazing the skin there, my thumb presses along her thrumming pulse. My mind blanks on all the reasons I don’t blur lines. I can’t think of a single reason I shouldn’t press my lips to hers.

“You can kiss me,” she whispers, those wide green eyes nearly begging me to do as she offers. I let out a shaky laugh, my thumb starting to swipe along her neck.

“I think that’s the worst idea I could have, kissing you,” I whisper back.

“Now, why is that?” I should stop, but as seems to be the case when Josie is around, I can’t seem to find my filter.

“Because everything in my life is already a mess, and you seem like the kind of woman who thrives off of chaos.”

With that, she smiles. Some people might be offended by my words, but not Josie. No, she seems to take it as a compliment. A challenge, even.

“But that’s the best kind of way to live. Spontaneous. Chaotic. Life is too short for neat and orderly.”

It’s a reminder that my life is just that and has been for some time: neat, orderly, and utterly boring. Empty. That night in the bar with her, I felt a void I hadn’t realized existed begin to fill, and having her close once more, I’m desperate to repeat it.

But before anything more can happen, my phone rings, and for the second time in just a few days, I’m pissed about it.

I don’t know where this was going to go, and any of the dozen images I’ve created in my mind are terrible ideas, but I can’t seem to convince myself that I wouldn’t have thoroughly enjoyed each and every one of them.

“I thought we weren’t supposed to bring those in here?” Josie asks as I pull away, standing and. As seems to be the way when Josie is near, I smile wide.

“I’m the boss. I get to make and break the rules.”

“I wonder just how many you’d actually break, Rowan,” she whispers before reaching for her own bag and standing.

“I’ve got a meeting in fifteen. That was an alarm.”

“Well, work calls, I suppose. Thanks for breakfast, Rowan.”

And before I can even prepare myself, she’s leaning forward, moving to her tiptoes, and pressing a kiss to my cheek.

I stand there dumbfounded as she smiles wickedly at me before walking away, hips swaying, that ass a target for my eyes.

And when she turns to look back at me over her shoulder a few yards away, she smiles again, confirming that she once again caught me staring at her ass.

I am so completely screwed.